A committee of Reed alumni, faculty, staff, and students has been formed to discuss ways to mark the
college’s centennial. It expects to report to President Colin Diver in April.

“While the centennial observance is likely to come to a climax in five years at the 100-year
anniversary of the start of classes, there are a number of other mileposts to consider,” says
vice president for college relations and committee chair Hugh Porter. “The hundredth anniversary
of our incorporation is June 27, 2008, and the first of Reed’s centennial classes, the class
of 2011, arrives on campus a year from this August. So it is not as if we have all that much time to
do this.”

In his charge, Diver asked committee members to “think broadly and creatively.” Noting
that the college has settled on one centennial project, a published oral history, and is also likely
to link fundraising activity to the centennial, Diver framed seven issues for consideration:

what an observance of Reed’s centennial should “seek to accomplish”;

the celebration’s time frame;

whether there should be “a theme or group of themes”;

which of Reed’s “ongoing or periodic events and programs” could be part of
the centennial observance;

what new or different
ideas, “including wild and whacky” ones, might make a
centennial “worthy of Reed”;